June 12 (Bloomberg) -- From a new stone tower on the border
with Yemen, Saudi soldiers send out patrols in search of
smugglers carrying drugs or weapons. They’re also trying to turn
back a growing wave of illegal migrants drawn to the biggest
economy in an Arab world rocked by political turmoil.

Dozens of observation points have gone up in the past 12
months in the southern province of Jazan, along the 1,100-mile
(1,800 kilometer) border with Yemen. In the al-Arda district
there are 20, some positioned on mountain ridges, others yards
from where Yemenis herd goats through sandy scrub-patched land.
Lieutenant-General Meladaan al-Meladaan, whose command covers a
stretch of 84 kilometers, says his patrols catch as many as 70
people a day from Yemen, Ethiopia, Somalia and Bangladesh, and
new technology will soon make them more effective.

Tightening the border is part of drive to bolster security
by Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, whose promotion
to the post last year was a milestone in the shift of power to a
younger generation of Saudi royals. He’s seeking to keep trouble
out of the kingdom and money inside it, ensuring that militants
can’t infiltrate, and that Saudis rather than illegal migrant
workers get the benefits of the $500 billion investment program
King Abdullah announced to avert domestic unrest.

‘Outside Influences’

“The Saudis view the region surrounding them in upheaval,
and are in the middle of fortifying their homeland,” Theodore
Karasik, director of research at the Institute for Near East and
Gulf Military Analysis in Dubai, said in a phone interview.
“They are taking these precautions to protect the kingdom from
outside influences, both human and contraband.”

The $730 billion Saudi economy is set to expand 4.4 percent
this year, the fastest in the Gulf Cooperation Council after
Qatar, according to the International Monetary Fund. Driven by
King Abdullah’s stimulus, growth was even faster last year, at
6.8 percent.

Guarding the border in Jazan is made tougher by the
geography. The province, one of four in the south, runs along
the Red Sea and through desert and rugged mountains.

“This is a very difficult area to patrol,” al-Meladaan
said, sitting in the Border Guard’s regional headquarters in al-Arda. “The border area is mountainous. It will be easier as we
install the new system.”

He said the Saudi Border Guards are installing motion
detector cameras, infra-red systems and GPS technology to link
their patrols. On Prince Mohammed’s watch, similar technology
has been deployed to protect Abqaiq, the world’s largest oil
processing facility, and to monitor car traffic flows on the
kingdom’s 173,000 kilometers (108,000 miles) of roads.

‘Better Job’

The Jazan border patrols caught 17,460 infiltrators in the
last month of the Islamic calendar, and seized items including
496 kilograms (1,093 pounds) of hashish, 15,600 kilograms of
fireworks and 2,691 head of cattle, the official Saudi Press
Agency reported today.

In the first six months of the Islamic year, Saudi security
forces caught 126,000 people trying to sneak into the kingdom
for work, said Brigadier General Abdullah Bin Mahfouz, a
spokesman for the Jazan border guard.

Mohammed Chancel, 26, was one of them. “I wanted to find a
better job in Saudi Arabia,” he said in the central guard post
of Al-Diyar district, where he’s being held with several other
Bangladeshis.

After flying to the Yemeni capital Sana’a six months ago on
a tourist visa, and working illegally for $120 a month, Chancel
says he paid as much as 3,000 riyals ($800) to be smuggled into
Saudi Arabia. His captors may have benefited from the new
lookout posts built in Al-Diyar under Prince Mohammed’s plan.

Khat, Whiskey

Another security post was holding a Somali with an injured
leg, shot by border guards after he tried to evade them with his
drug haul. Smugglers can make as much as 500 riyals per kilogram
of hashish they get across the border.

The guards caught 2,930 people in the six-month period
smuggling hashish, the leafy narcotic khat or whiskey into Saudi
Arabia, where some such offenses carry the death sentence. They
also seized 4,025 weapons, including machine guns.

Appointed as interior minister in November by King
Abdullah, Prince Mohammed, born in 1959, is leading the push to
adopt advanced technology to better secure the country. The son
of former Crown Prince and Interior Minister Prince Nayef, who
died in June last year, Mohammed had previously worked closely
with the U.S. as he spearheaded the Saudi fight against al-Qaeda, which has attacked oil installations in the kingdom.

‘Shut to Infiltrators’

Prince Mohammed “is someone who has gone to the level of
the streets to understand a problem,” said Mustafa Alani, an
analyst at the Geneva-based Gulf Research Center. His counter-terrorism program is “credited with saving the royal family and
the country from al-Qaeda.”

Saudi Arabia has been attacked from across the Yemeni
border in the past. In late 2009, Saudi forces battled Shiite
Houthi rebels for months after they seized land inside the
kingdom. Al-Qaeda militants based in Yemen, the home of Osama
bin Laden’s ancestors, attempted to assassinate Prince Mohammed
in Jeddah in 2009.

King Abdullah’s program seeks to create jobs for a youthful
population. About a quarter of Saudis aged 20 to 30 are out of
work, and while the kingdom has largely avoided the wave of Arab
unrest that began in 2011, there have been scattered protests
and growing criticism of authorities on social media.

New airports, ports and roads across the Arabian Peninsula
are part of the plan. In Jazan, a new road is being cut through
the mountains to the Yemen border, and bulldozers from the Saudi
Binladin Group are leveling the land under the border guard’s
protection. The government has also relocated almost 100
villages to create a deeper security zone in the district in
Jazan where Saudi forces battled Houthi rebels.

Bin Mahfouz says the aim is for the frontier to be “shut
to infiltrators” within four years.